Monterey Bay Shores Ecoresort plan hearing on hold

It will take more time before a long-controversial resort project in Sand City returns to the Coastal Commission for a new hearing.

A San Francisco Superior Court judge said in May 2013 the proposed Monterey Bay Shores Ecoresort should get a new commission hearing for a coastal permit. But getting that done turned into a legal whirlpool.

After developer Ed Ghandour, who has pursued the project for more than 20 years, won the order for a new hearing, the commission said it would appeal.

Attorneys for Ghandour and the Coastal Commission then struck a settlement designed to clear the way for the commission to rehear the project's permit application. But in early January, the 1st District Court of Appeal said the legal maneuvering needed more work.

The permit hearing was set for the commission's March 13 meeting in Long Beach, but Friday the meeting agenda said the item was postponed because of pending litigation.

Attorneys for Ghandour and the state Attorney General's Office, which represents the Coastal Commission, didn't answer phone messages on Friday.

Larry Silver, an attorney for the Sierra Club, an intervenor in the case, said there are ongoing negotiations between the two parties to get several appellate issues back to the trial court and to the commission.

"My understanding is there is some kind of settlement between the state and (Ghandour's Security National Guarantee) to let the commission have another shot," Silver said.

He said the Sierra Club is not party to the settlement negotiations.

"We still oppose the project. It still has certain problems the commission will need to address," Silver said.

The project proposes 184 hotel rooms, 184 condominium units, a conference center, a spa, restaurants, swimming pools and other features on part of a 39-acre site formerly used for sand-mining.

Originally, Ghandour proposed a much bigger project with 495 hotel rooms and condos, but scaled it back with a design terraced into the dunes. City officials say it is one of two proposed resort projects allowable under the city's local coastal plan.

The project has bounced between the courts and commission before.

In 2008, Ghandour won an appellate court ruling to have the Coastal Commission reconsider the project and the panel again turned it down. The developer appealed.

Last year, San Francisco Judge Harold Kahn noted the administrative record on the project has swollen to 80 volumes.

Kahn said in his 2013 ruling that some commissioners and coastal staff appeared hostile to development at the site.